When routing small rectangular holes, grooves, or recesses into small blocks of wood, or onto the sides or ends of boards, it is desirable to include an integral clamping assembly which can be readily adjusted so that a precise cut can be made.
One example of a prior art design is found in Spielman, P., The New Router Handbook (New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 1993) at pp. 352-354. This prior art device, referred to as The WoodRat.TM., consists of a large horizontal extruded-aluminum body or base. Inside this horizontal extruded-aluminum body is another extrusion which functions as a work-holding carriage. As shown in illus. 32-20 to 32-23, and as explained at p. 353, the combination of router movement and/or workfeed movement provides the necessary flexibility to produce numerous controlled joinery cuts. While this prior art device is suitable for forming a variety of tenons and other types of joints onto the ends of boards, it does not appear to be particularly suited for clamping and routing onto very small or thin workpieces. That is to say, due to the nature of the clamping action, it would seem that the workpiece would need to be of sufficient thickness so that the full length of the jaws contacts the workpiece, which would rule out the clamping of small blocks and thinner workpieces on this device. Furthermore, the jaws of the clamping assembly are oriented substantially vertically so that workpieces cannot be easily positioned for routing operations along their length. In order to do so, it would appear that a workpiece would have to be held horizontally and be clamped only by its two ends, which would require that the ends of the workpiece be made true and perpendicular to its length for a reliable grip. Also the length of the workpiece would be limited by the maximum distance between the Woodrat.TM. jaws. As well, the jaws of the clamping assembly appear to be metal and they will have to be located sufficiently below the router baseplate so that the blade of the router will not make contact with them when passing underneath. Additionally, the movement that the router can make in order to form the tenons and various other types of joints is limited. Finally, the WoodRat.TM. is a wall mounted device which is not easily portable.